


Not as it appears

by YSF



Series: Masquerade [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, But the character death(s) are only mentioned, Dark, Demon Deals, Dystopian, Mindfuck, Sad, as in ignoring pretty much all of Naruto plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YSF/pseuds/YSF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell is not always as it appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not as it appears

**Author's Note:**

> If you recall from the first fic of the series what Naruto sold his soul for, it’s all the nicer. Tell me what you think, afterwards?

It's just starting.

 

Lights above are blinding.

 

They center on the big platform ahead, but it’s so bright in all the dullness that he can’t really see what’s there.

 

He feels people around him shift, thrumming with barely contained energy. They seem hyper. Unstable. Mad. All of them.

 

He isn’t sure why it makes him feel both sad and disgusted.

 

He is so tired already. It takes so much chakra, it takes even more will… He’s been here for so long that he starts to wonder if he will ever make it at all. He wonders how much time has passed outside – he bets it wasn’t more than an hour, just to make it worse – but he really has to stay focused.

 

Shrill, cheerful music bursts in, and confetti is getting in his eyes as he frantically looks around. The mass of people is moving with it, yelling, laughing, chanting, screaming, just making so much noise that he can practically feel his head splitting, and it’s only a matter of a few seconds until he is swept by the crowd.

 

It's madness.

 

He pushes through the people – they really can’t object, given their state – and he looks for the flash of blond, of blue, anything to point _him_ out, whatever shape or form, but he’s also so scared to find him. Scared to see those mirthful blue eyes unfocused, pupils dilated, his open face slack with insanity and drive. Afraid to find everything that is _him_ long, long gone.

 

He screams. Screams until his throat feels raw and his lungs burn, screams the name from his own blood, his own air, his own heartbeat, just calling and calling as _he_ once did, but…

 

He knows he has no time for that – for his knees to shake, for the tight burst of panic along every nerve ending he still controls, for these hysterics and tunneling vision, that if he wants to ever find his dobe, he has to move, just has to, but it has been so long, so very long without any hope, and he’s getting desperate and…

 

The mob is so out of it by now that his slightest weakness is going to be the death of him, he knows. They would run over him and rip him to pieces, and it would be good to move **_right the fuck now_** , but then he notices – he notices…

 

Her green eyes unfocused and dull – he remembers them sparkling with joy and tears and anger; her shiny pink hair messy and half-ripped out, dirt on her face.

 

His white hair almost gone, mask falling off, hands and face caked with blood.

 

All the people that smiled at _him_ on the street. People that went with him through the toughest times. Those he fought against and fought back to back with. Those he protected on missions and those he tried to kill. Those he considered _his_ people, _their_ people!

 

_They_ were the mob. Rabid animals. Unstable. Disgusting. Wrong.

 

And he really can’t stop the shaking anymore, running from face to face, stumbling and bumping, eyes wide with such sudden and sharp horror, and he really can’t get what’s going on in Naruto’s head, Kami-sama…

 

The shock is so strong it stills him. Dark eyes are still searching for the flash of blond, but the realization’s already struck, and he feels desperation swelling up in his throat, choking him, suffocating him, and he wants to scream, but his throat feels too raw and no sounds come out, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters.

 

It’s the end.

 

He failed.

 

The most beautiful, most important sharingan technique, letting it’s master in any mind, trapped or not, manipulating the conscious, wrapping and healing.

 

If you know how to.

 

But the mind is no toy, the trapped mind is no easy trip, and it’s so easy to get lost in another’s trap, so easy to loose the way.

 

And Sasuke knows, he knows: even if he finds Naruto now, they will never get free, because shocked and scared, he lost where he came from, that small thread to the safety of the real world, and it will take forever to find, and he’s sure, he's positive  he wouldn’t last that long.

 

He thinks that maybe he doesn’t have a choice.

 

The real world is in the hospital room, where Naruto – unnaturally pale on the white sheets – is unconscious and trapped by an unknown illusion. Where all the friends (faces without bloodied masks, eyes clear with worry) watch closely over his own still form right beside the bed, looking for any sign of success. The real world where that sign will never come.

 

He can taste the failure alright.

 

Lights blind.

 

Hysterically cheerful music is almost deafening.

 

The mass of people shifts, thrumming with barely contained energy, breathing harshly, and their unfamiliarly familiar faces make his heart trump painfully. 

 

And he watches again, as he knows he forever will now, drenched in despair as it unravels before him, this sick Hell, how the people _they_ care for are driven rabid, turning into mindless, hysterical animals. How the only love he had is somewhere there alone among them – the thought suffocates him it’s so painful, and he can’t stop now, he can’t, he has to find him, but he’s also so scared, so scared and helpless now, and it hurts so much that he feels sick - because he forever _failed._

 

 

 

And he doesn’t know that outside of this nightmare, in the reality of the hospital Naruto opens his eyes – a little red underneath the blue, but everyone’s too happy to notice small things like that. He acts a bit differently than before, smirks more than grins nowadays, but it’s okay after all that he went through.

 

He will never know now that no one really understood the cause of his death, and there were no Uchihas to ask for a clue. He will never know that his own funeral was small, quick and heart-felt, and that tearful Naruto hid a malicious grin behind the handkerchief.

 

And mysterious deaths that took away everyone they knew, every other bright shinobi one by one – well, death is no stranger to shinobis, and it was way too late when they found out the pattern.

 

And after Jiraya’s death there really was no one to notice that the Kyuubi’s seal was broken through.

 

 

 

No one will ever get a chance to understand that in revenge demons take more than just an eye for an eye, but it doesn’t really matter since they will all pay the price anyway.


End file.
